"Look, Irish. You"re a good anything--and that"s the truth. You have looks and you have brains and I have a hunch through all that Emerald Isle sauciness you have a heart too. But--"
"But you don"t want to tell me."
"It isn"t I don"t want to, but no one"s supposed to know, not even the President."
"You sure make it sound mysterious."
"Just the officers. Oh, h.e.l.l. I don"t know. What good would it do if I told you?"
"I guess you"d just get it off your chest, that"s all."
"I can"t tell anyone official, Sheila. I"d have my head handed to me.
But I"ve got to think and I"ve got to tell someone. I"ll go crazy, just knowing and not doing anything."
"It"s important, isn"t it?"
Larry downed another drink quickly. It was his fourth and Sheila had never seen him take more than three or four in the course of a whole evening. "You"re d.a.m.ned right it"s important." Larry leaned forward across the postage-stamp table. A liquor-haze clouded his eyes as he said: "It"s so important that unless someone does something about it, we"ll all be dead inside of twenty-four hours. Only trouble is, there isn"t anything anyone can do about it."
"Larry--you"re a little drunk."
"I know it. I know I am. I want to be a lot drunker. What the h.e.l.l can a guy do?"
"What do you know, Larry? What have you heard?"
"I know they have the President of the Galactic Federation aboard this ship and that he ought to be told the truth."
"No. I mean--"
"They sent out an SOS, kid. Controls are locked. Lifeboats don"t have enough power to get us out of the sun"s gravitational pull. We"re all going to roast, I tell you!"
Sheila felt her heart throb wildly. Even though he was well on the way to being thoroughly drunk, Larry was telling the truth. Instinctively, she knew that--was certain of it. "What are you going to do?" she said.
He shrugged. "I guess because I can"t do a d.a.m.ned thing I"m going to get good and drunk. That"s what I"m going to do. Or maybe--who the h.e.l.l knows?--maybe in one minute I"m going to jump up on this table and tell everyone what I overheard. Maybe I ought to do that, huh?"
"Larry, Larry--if it"s as bad as you say, maybe you ought to think before you do anything."
"Who am I to think? I"m one of the muscle men. That"s what they pay me for, isn"t it?"
"Larry. You don"t have to shout."
"Well, isn"t it?"
"If you don"t calm down I"ll have to leave."
"You can sit still. You can park here all night. _I"m_ leaving."
"What are you going to do?"
"Oh ... that." Larry got up from the table. He looked suddenly green and Sheila thought it was because he had too much to drink. "You don"t have to worry about that, Sheila. Not now you don"t. I all of a sudden don"t feel so good. Headache. Man, I never felt anything like it. Better go to my cabin and lie down. Maybe I"ll wake up and find out all this was a dream, huh?"
"Do you need any help?" Sheila demanded, real concern in her voice.
"No. "Sall right. Man, this headache really snuck up on me. Pow! Without any warning."
"Let me help you."
"No. Just leave me alone, will you?" Larry staggered off across the crowded dance floor. He drew angry glances and muttered comments as he disturbed the dancers waltzing to Carlotti"s _Danube in s.p.a.ce_.
Why don"t you admit it, Grange, Larry thought as he staggered through the companionway toward his cabin. That"s what you always wanted, isn"t it--a place of importance?
A place in the sun, they call it.
"You"re going to get a place in the sun, all right," he mumbled aloud.
"Right smack in the middle of the sun with everyone else aboard this ship!"
The humor of it amused him perversely. He smiled--but it was closer to a leer--and lunged into his cabin. What he said to Sheila was no joke. He really did have a splitting headache. It had come on suddenly and it was like no headache he had ever known. It pulsed and throbbed and beat against his temples and held red hot needles to the backs of his eyeb.a.l.l.s, almost blinding him. It sapped all his strength, leaving him physically weak. He was barely able to close the door behind him and stagger to the shower.
An ice cold shower, he thought would help. He stripped quickly and got under the needle spray. By that time he was so weak he could barely stand.
A place in the sun, he thought....
Something grabbed his mind and wrenched it.
Johnny Mayhem awoke.
Awakening came slowly, as it always did. It was a rising through infinite gulfs, a rebirth for a man who had died a hundred times and might die a thousand times more as the years piled up and became centuries. It was a spinning, whirling, flashing ascent from blackness to coruscating colors, brightness, giddiness.
And suddenly, it was over.
A needle spray of ice-cold water beat down upon him. He shuddered and reached for the water-taps, shutting them. Dripping, he climbed from the shower.
And floated up--quite weightless--toward the ceiling.
Frowning with his new and as yet unseen face, Johnny Mayhem propelled himself to the floor. He looked at his arms. He was naked--at least that much was right.
But obviously, since he was weightless, he was not on Deneb IV. During his transmigration he had been briefed for the trouble on Deneb IV. Then had a mistake been made somehow? It was always possible--but it had never happened before.
Too much precision and careful planning was involved.
Every world which had an Earthman population and a Galactic League--now, Galactic Federation--post, must have a body in cold storage, waiting for Johnny Mayhem if his services were required. No one knew when Mayhem"s services might be required. No one knew exactly under what circ.u.mstances the Galactic Federation Council, operating from the Hub of the Galaxy, might summon Mayhem. And only a very few people, including those at the Hub and the Galactic League Firstmen on civilized worlds and Observers on frontier planets, knew the precise mechanics of Mayhem"s coming.
Johnny Mayhem, a bodiless sentience. Mayhem--Johnny Marlow then--who had been chased from Earth a pariah and a criminal seven years ago, who had been mortally wounded on a wild planet deep within the Sagittarian Swarm, whose life had been saved--after a fashion--by the white magic of that planet. Mayhem, doomed now to possible immortality as a bodiless sentience, an _elan_, which could occupy and activate a corpse if it had been preserved properly ... an _elan_ doomed to wander eternally because it could not remain in one body for more than a month without body and _elan_ perishing. Mayhem, who had dedicated his strange, lonely life to the services of the Galactic League--now the Galactic Federation--because a normal life and normal social relations were not possible to him....